Football The role of luck in sports

**DaFace** · 01-05-2014, 03:41 PM

When you really think about it, an enormous amount of an NFL team's success comes from luck. Yes, solid drafting, FA moves, coaching, etc. all push you in the right direction, but there's clearly not a lot of true skill involved in things like plucking Tom Brady out of the 6th round of the draft or having the #1 pick on the year that Andrew Luck is available.

It's the same thing both within a season (having an easy vs. hard schedule) and even during a given game (injuries galore yesterday).

If I were to arbitrarily pull a number out of my ass, I'd say that only around 60% of a team's success in the NFL is under the control of the team's management and 40% just has to fall in place. (You can debate the exact proportions, but the point still stands.)

So...

Does luck make the game more fun? Or does it just suck? On the one hand, it makes games we end up winning because of good fortune a lot of fun, but man...it's tough to invest so much time over a season to a game that comes down to nothing but a weighted coin flip in the end.

01-05-2014, 03:41 PM	Topic Starter
DaFace Kind of a mod Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Donkey Land Casino cash: $1636899	The role of luck in sports When you really think about it, an enormous amount of an NFL team's success comes from luck. Yes, solid drafting, FA moves, coaching, etc. all push you in the right direction, but there's clearly not a lot of true skill involved in things like plucking Tom Brady out of the 6th round of the draft or having the #1 pick on the year that Andrew Luck is available. It's the same thing both within a season (having an easy vs. hard schedule) and even during a given game (injuries galore yesterday). If I were to arbitrarily pull a number out of my ass, I'd say that only around 60% of a team's success in the NFL is under the control of the team's management and 40% just has to fall in place. (You can debate the exact proportions, but the point still stands.) So... Does luck make the game more fun? Or does it just suck? On the one hand, it makes games we end up winning because of good fortune a lot of fun, but man...it's tough to invest so much time over a season to a game that comes down to nothing but a weighted coin flip in the end.
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